PAKISTAN
Bombs kill five people
An official said two bomb blasts targeting anti-Taliban tribal elders and security forces have killed five people in the country’s northwest. Tariq Khan said the attacks occurred yesterday in Chamarkand town in the Bajur tribal region. Khan is a senior official in the area. Khan said that in the first attack, a bomb planted alongside a road exploded as two anti-Taliban tribal elders were walking past, killing them both. Khan said a second blast occurred when security forces rushed to the scene, killing two paramilitary soldiers and one police official.
BANGLADESH
RAB cop nabbed for looting
A security force commander was arrested yesterday over the theft of 20 million taka (US$246,000) of devotees’ donations from a Sufi shrine, police said. Lieutenant Colonel Zulfiqar Ali, 45, is accused of organizing the operation to steal the money from the Talsara Darbar Sharif near Chittagong last year when he was head of the city’s Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) division. Local media said Ali used the money to buy a luxury apartment in Dhaka. Created in 2004, the paramilitary RAB has a poor public image because of allegations of torture and being a government-controlled “death squad.”
JAPAN
Lost bird blurts out address
A pet parakeet was returned to its owner on Wednesday after the lost bird told police its home address near Tokyo. The male bird had escaped early on Sunday morning from its owner’s home in the city of Sagamihara, west of Tokyo, and remained at large before perching on the shoulder of a guest staying in a nearby hotel. Handed over to local police, the bird did not speak until Tuesday evening, when it blurted out the names of the city and district where its owner’s house is located, a spokesman for the north Sagamihara police station said. It then produced the home’s block and street number as a trio of astonished police officers listened to the now talkative bird. The bird’s owner, a 64-year-old woman, once lost another parakeet after it flew away and was determined to prevent a repeat, the spokesman said. “So the owner decided to teach the address to this parakeet after she bought it at a pet shop two years ago,” he said. “The bird’s name was found to be Piko-chan as it said, ‘You’re pretty, Piko-chan.’”
AUSTRALIA
Giant ‘wombat’ lived in trees
Sheep-sized relatives of modern-day wombats lived in treetops 15 million years ago, a paleontologist said yesterday as she was honored for her discovery. Karen Black, from the University of New South Wales, said her team discovered the world’s largest tree-climbing marsupial among fossils found at the Riversleigh World Heritage Site in Queensland state. The 70kg diprotodontoids were most closely related to wombats, a furry ground-dwelling animal only found on the continent, Black said.
AUSTRALIA
Tourists raped at gunpoint
A man was arrested yesterday after two European tourists were allegedly raped at gunpoint as they slept in their car in the desert town of Alice Springs. Police said the women, whose nationalities were not released, were sleeping in their parked vehicle on Wednesday morning when they were attacked. Commander Michael Murphy said the men allegedly forced the women to have sex with them.
ISRAEL
Haggai Amir goes free
The brother and key accomplice of the man who assassinated former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin is to be freed today after more than 16 years in jail, Israel Prison Services spokeswoman Sivan Weizman said yesterday. Haggai Amir “was sentenced to 16 years in prison for complicity in the murder of Rabin, and another six months for death threats he made against former prime minister Ariel Sharon,” she added. Haggai Amir is the brother of Yigal Amir, who shot and fatally wounded Rabin at a Tel Aviv peace rally on Nov. 4, 1995, in a bid to torpedo the Oslo autonomy accords with the Palestinians. He is serving a life term.
KYRGYZSTAN
US base not about money
President Almazbek Atambayev said keeping the US air base in the country beyond June 2014 would depend on how developments in Afghanistan affect regional stability, as well as increases in rental payments. Atambayev told public broadcasters on Wednesday that the fate of Manas Transit Center would be decided in the nation’s best interests. All US troops moving in and out of nearby Afghanistan travel through Manas. Large numbers of troops are set to come home in 2014 as the war winds down. Atambayev said US assumptions that the base would remain in place simply in exchange for higher rent were unfounded. The US pays US$60 million annually for the base. He also hinted that decisions on the base may ultimately lie with the nation’s military ally, Russia.
NEPAL
PM to form unity Cabinet
In a last-ditch effort to finish years of work on a new constitution, Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai will dissolve his Cabinet and form a new coalition government that includes members of the main opposition parties, said his press adviser, Ram Rijan Yadav. The prime minister was to hold talks with leaders of the main political parties later yesterday to finalize the agreement before making the formal announcement, Yadav said. The two main opposition parties — Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal United Marxist Leninist — negotiated with Bhattarai late on Wednesday and confirmed that they would join his new government. It is still unclear whether a coalition government will be able to finalize the constitution by the deadline. The main sticking points include the number of federal states and who would be the nation’s executive head.
IRAQ
VP’s trial delayed a week
The trial in absentia of Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi yesterday was delayed a week after his lawyers called for it to be held in a special court as his allies dismissed the case as politicized. Hashemi stands accused along with several of his bodyguards of running a death squad, but left the country weeks ago and was not expected to attend the trial. Hours before the trial was due to open, shootings and bombings erupted in the Harithiyah neighborhood where the Central Criminal Court of Iraq (CCCI) is situated, although not in the immediate vicinity of the court compound. An Iraqi soldier was killed in a shooting at 8am, while three roadside bombs wounded two police bomb disposal experts at around the same time, an interior ministry official said. “The trial has been postponed until May 10,” Higher Judicial Council spokesman Abdelsattar Bayraqdar said. Lawyers for Hashemi called for the case to be held in a special court rather than the CCCI, and a judge is to consider their request before the case resumes in a week.
UNITED STATES
Man guilty of police death
A man accused of pushing a police officer to his death in New York last year was convicted of manslaughter, but acquitted of murder on Wednesday. The man, George Villanueva, was being arrested after police received a 911 call from a woman who said he was threatening to kill her. Villanueva struggled as police handcuffed him and in the process one of the officers, Alain Schaberger. fell nearly 3m and broke his neck. Prosecutors charged Villanueva, 43, who has 30 arrests on his record, with murder and argued that he intentionally killed the officer. A defense lawyer for Villanueva argued that other officers bumped Schaberger and caused him to fall. The jury found Villanueva guilty of aggravated manslaughter and he faces up to 30 years in prison.
UNITED STATES
‘Racist’ Kutcher ad pulled
An online ad featuring Ashton Kutcher as an Indian man has been pulled offline after viewers called it racist. The images and video for Popchips — a brand of potato chips — feature the 34-year-old star in brown makeup portraying a Bollywood producer named Raj who is “looking for love.” Other videos featuring Kutcher as a stoner, tattooed Southerner and pasty fashionista remain online. A spokeswoman for Popchips says the dating parody featuring the four characters was “created to provoke a few laughs and was never intended to stereotype or offend anyone.” A spokeswoman for Kutcher has not commented.
UNITED STATES
Gunman kills four
A gunman, identified by local media as a border militia leader and reputed neo-Nazi, shot dead four people including a toddler girl in Arizona on Wednesday before apparently committing suicide, police said. The youngest victim, between one and two years old, was still alive at the scene, but died in a hospital, Balafas said. The other dead were two men and two women. Local media identified the suspected shooter as Jason “JT” Ready, who founded a militia that hunts for drug-traffickers near the Mexican border. Balafas said officers were interviewing a witness to the shooting, which investigators believe stemmed from a “domestic situation.”
MEXICO
Experts find ancient blood
Researchers say they have found evidence of blood cells and tissue fragments on 2,000-year-old stone knives. The National Institute of Anthropology and History says the finding clearly corroborates accounts from later cultures about the use of sharp obsidian knives in human sacrifice. The institute made a methodical examination using a scanning electron microscope to positively identify the tissues on 31 knives from the Cantona site in the central state of Puebla.
GUATEMALA
Eight held over takeover
Authorities detained eight people over the alleged seizing of an army outpost. President Otto Molina said the rioters are accomplices of drug traffickers. Hundreds of soldiers and police officers were sent to Huehuetenango Province after 200 people armed with machetes and guns took over the outpost, demanding a stop to what they say are attempts to intimidate them because of they oppose a hydroelectric project in their town. “We received several reports of harassment in Huehuetenango allegedly connected to the hydroelectric plant, but those are reports that have to be investigated,” representative of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Guatemala, Alberto Brunori, said.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of